The Development Of A Continuum: Andrey Iones On TimeShift

TimeShift is the first major game from
Saber, a studio run out of New Jersey with the bulk of its development
staff in Saint Petersburg, Russia. Here, VP of production, Andrey Iones,
talks about the unique structure of the developer, the strengths of
working with in-house tech, and working on a title that switched publishers
during development as well as being sent back for a year of re-development
after originally being completed in 2006.

First I want to ask --
you guys are based in Saint Petersburg?

Andrey Iones: We actually have two
offices -- one in New York/New Jersey, and another one is in Saint Petersburg.
The bulk of development was done in Saint Petersburg. We have over 80
people over there, and we have the management team and production team
in New York.

So these offices...
they're both owned by Saber? You don't outsource to other developers?

AI: We run both offices. Both offices
are a part of Saber and we run as-is -- integrated team. But we do some
small outsourcing to some other teams in other parts of Russia and the
Ukraine, to do small things like individual assets, characters, and
things like this.

What's the background on how this
company got set up and how you developed having that satellite office?
I guess that satellite office is the one in America? It's smaller?

AI: I wouldn't really call either office
a satellite office. The company was set up seven years ago by three
guys: myself -- Andrey Iones -- Matthew Karch, my partner, and Anton
Krupkin. I grew up in Saint Petersburg, Russia, and moved to the U.S.,
and so did Anton. We met this man who used to be a lawyer, who was doing
some immigration case for me. We got [to be] friends, and we decided
to do something on our own.

I had a background in computer science
in general, as well as in gaming. He was passionate about games. He
owned every console since he was a kid. So we decided to do our own
thing, and that's how it all started in New York, but because I have
connections and I grew up in Saint Petersburg, Russia, it was natural
for us to do an expansion over there. We just kept growing and growing
the team.

We started with a small title called
Will Rock done for Ubisoft, which was done PC-only, but it was a small,
decent title just to get our feet wet, and to form the team and to establish
technology. And then, seven years later, here we are done with TimeShift
on three SKUs.

First of all, do you have your own
technology, or do you use an engine that's provided from another company?

AI: No. We use our own technology.
We do work with some middleware providers such as Havok or GameSpy...
but the core technology was done in Saber, by Saber, so we have full
control over it. We have to, because in a game like TimeShift,
you need to have full control over the tech if you want to do something
as challenging as time control.

Right. How does that play into it
when you're developing the engine? Because this game has that time control
mechanic, which is different than most of the FPSes on the market. Is
that something that you find is really important
-- catering the engine's technology to the gameplay design?

AI: It was really important for us
to have a gameplay hook which would put Saber aside from the pack of
other games similar to ours, so we'd have something unique to us. Having
our own technology was really instrumental in pushing the game out on
all three SKUs, and at the same time it allowed us to implement all
the complexities related to time control in general, and time reversal
in particular.

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